Shadow Philosophy by Andersen Nathan;

Author:Andersen, Nathan;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1675947
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

Art’s potential

No one among his interlocutors notes it, but we should consider that this suggestion – if they truly had knowledge they ought to be leaders and educators rather than writers and rhapsodes – resembles closely a proposal developed earlier in connection with the allegory of the cave. There Socrates argues that the true philosopher, who escapes from the cave and learns to contemplate the way things really are rather than how they seem to the masses, should be compelled to return to the cave, to educate and lead. In the case of philosophers, it is their inability or unwillingness to put their thinking into practice that makes the multitudes misunderstand them or consider their insights ridiculous. When it comes to the poet, the same incapacity suggests to the philosopher that his accomplishments are frivolous. This conclusion depends upon an assumption that it is better to accomplish great deeds than describe them. As evidence, Socrates cites the fact that the greatest honors accrue to those who act. What is apparently not considered is whether composing great works is itself a great deed, deserving of the kind of praise that was in fact bestowed upon the greatest of Greek poets, and upon great writers, artists, actors, and filmmakers in our own age. At the same time it suggests the possibility that this praise is misplaced, that we praise poets and imitators for the wrong kinds of things, for being popular rather than providing real benefit to their audiences, for educating and improving them.

In order to motivate the conclusion that painters and poets are lacking in knowledge, Socrates focuses specifically on their depictions of skilled individuals: shoemakers, carpenters, doctors, and other experts. To show they don’t know the subjects they depict, he asks whether one who paints, say, a portrait of a shoemaker, knows what it takes to make a shoe, or whether someone, like Homer, who portrays a leader’s acts himself knows how to lead. There’s something odd about that way of posing the question whether imitators know their subject matter, because of course we don’t expect a general to recite poetry or a cobbler to paint. What we should ask, instead, is whether imitators have distinctive insights of their own, whether there’s a wisdom involved in depiction that’s distinct from the wisdom involved in the subject depicted. Certainly, skill is required for imitation, for depicting things so that they resemble closely the original. “If he is a good painter,” Socrates notes, “by painting a carpenter and displaying him from far off, he would deceive children and foolish human beings into thinking that it is truly a carpenter” (598c). What is at stake here, however, is not whether the imitator can only fool the foolish but whether she can teach the teachable, whether the imitator has insights of her own, communicated in her works.

This criticism of the imitator bears a striking resemblance to one brought against filmmakers when, in the early years of cinema, certain critics objected to the notion that film could be an art form at all.

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